My main interests are in how environmental information gets translated into behavioral and reproductive responses and what role the neuroendocrine system plays in the translation. I use amphibians as model systems.  Currently, projects in my laboratory include 1) studies on how environmental contaminants may act as endocrine disruptors to affect  development and adult stress responses and behavior and 2) to understand the interaction between the environment and molecular mechanisms involved in seasonal reproduction in adults and sexual differentiation during development.  Specifically, we have been investigating a very commonly used pesticide, endosulfan, and its effects on reproduction and development in four different systems, tadpole development, mosquitofish sexual dimorphism, salamander pheromone production, and amphibian stress responses.  We have also investigated the effects of a common industrial compound on sexual differentiation, and we are studying the complex physiological events that result from exposure to environmental mixes of compounds found in wastewater.  

This faculty member is also a mentor in the NSF IGERT graduate training program: NAU’s IGERT PhD program seeks to identify key links between genes and the environment and is designed to train exceptional graduate students in molecular genetics, environmental sciences, and spatio-temporal modeling.

My lab group and I are interested in endocrine regulatory pathways involved in development.We are collaborating with Paul Flikkema and with researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute to investigate endocrine regulatory pathways involved in development. The goal is to use a systems biology approach to 1) determine the network of gene interactions sensitive to normal endocrine action during development, 2) determine how the structural and temporal characteristics of these networks are perturbed when organisms are exposed to environmental chemicals (Mayer et al. 2003; Park et al. 2004), 3) clarify how these perturbations are correlated to changes in phenotypic outcomes (Park and Propper 2002), and 4) determine how different complex mixes of environmental compounds can impact development, fitness, and ultimately population structure. Important components of this integrative project are molecular analyses, functional assessment of endocrine activity, and statistical modeling approaches to bridge between genotypic and phenotypic data over the developmental time course. IGERT students will be involved in multidisciplinary research in endocrinology, molecular biology, statistics and systems engineering.